… where I’ll be spending the next three days getting around exclusively by bike and mass transit. It’s an exercise largely to see what it’s like to be mobile in a city with extensive bike paths and routes, a city where bikes are accepted and incorporated into the transportation system. I’m also interested to see how bike transport integrates with Denver’s mass transit system, RTD, which includes an extensive bus network and hugely popular light rail system. (As is currently the case in the Triangle, light rail here was decried here as a waste — until it was built. Now, the pressure is on to expand the system.)read more
Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast, especially come summer. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease this trying transition, we’re running a new feature every Monday, at least during the summer, called 90 Second Escape. Essentially, it’s a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s in the sun.read more
Finding Sharon McCarthy's car in a parking lot is pretty easy.
Yesterday, Sharon McCarthy stopped to look at the white dot on the tree trunk, the last of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of such white dots she had seen over the past 22 months.
Well?
Robert Williams and I waited. Sharon, a k a Smoky Scout, was yards away from becoming the sixth person this year and only the 25th total to complete the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. She was staring down her last blaze, and the two of us, her escorts for her final day, were expecting a profound statement. Maybe not “One-small-step …” profound, but something worthy of completing a nearly 1,000-mile journey.read more
Not the boat you'll be sailing in Adult Learn to Sail.
Sail the not-so-high seas, run with the lions and tigers and bears, take a long bike ride in the mountains. You’ve got all sorts of options in North Carolina this weekend.
Coast
You’ve taken the local learn-to-sail class on the local lake, and it was fun. It also made you wonder what it would be like to sail the high seas. Or if not “high” — because, frankly, that sounds a little scary — then at least the salty spray, because that taste in your mouth is what tells you you’re really sailing. Sunday, you have a chance to get a sense of that Columbusian sense of adventure at the North Carolina Maritime Museum’s Adult Learn to Sail program. “Learn the basics aboard stable sailboats” — doesn’t get much more reassuring than that. The course runs from 1-5 p.m. $95. Reservations are required.read more
Remember when Opie had to chose between football and piano lessons? Trying times indeed for the sheriff.
I wrote the following for the Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer in Raleigh, where it originally appeared August 16. See the related post on student athlete injuries that appeared here yesterday.
As school approaches and a busy round of athletic seasons — from football to soccer to cross country — begins, parents face a variety of concerns as their student athletes hit the playing field.read more
